Part 2

"I mean Dr. MacCluett," she squalled. "That was a very dangerous operation he performed on you. He might have done an irreparable injury to your poor little brain."

In all my life I had never heard such a silly statement.

"Panda, I got to tell you something," I sighed. "Even that bear in that carnival couldn't damage my brain. He beat both paws to a pulp on my head, and then said to hell with it. We used to call that bear 'Old Limpy.'"

She didn't appear to be paying an awful lot of attention to what I was saying. "Dr. MacCluett confessed everything," she went on in a tremulous voice. "He really was jealous of you. So he decided to modify your waveform. He used an ultrasonic beam to perform a sort of transorbital lobotomy and make you lovable."

* * * * *

It didn't seem like a strictly sensible thing for a smart man like Dr. MacCluett to do. Still, I guess having a high I.Q. doesn't necessarily guarantee a man against being a complete jerk in certain things.

"Why, that poor stupid genius!" I chuckled.

Leo let out a strangled roar. "Freddy," he bellowed, "what is this pinto Ph.D. saying? Is she saying you have let some wacky scientist tamper with your putrid personality?"

That wacky scientist had tampered all right. There wasn't much point in denying it, so I just raised my eyebrows like a furry pair of humpbacked Japanese bridges.

Panda drew a long shuddering breath and began to close in on me. "When Dr. MacCluett made that wave shift," she murmured, "he overlooked the fact that there is but a very thin line separating love and hate. He--" She reached up suddenly and slipped her arms around my neck. "Oh-h-h, Fred--dy!" she cooed.

It was a pleasant sensation. I mean, it was a sort of change from having drinks sloshed over you. For a moment there I began to think science was wonderful. I still hadn't had time to realize my career had just gone down in flames. I still didn't know what an appalling experience being a lovable character was going to turn out to be.

I found out. Oh, brother, how I found out!

Twice during the next week Leo arranged matches for me. And twice those kindly old ladies surged through the ropes to protect me.

For awhile I kept hoping my new personality would wear off like a hangover. But it kept getting stronger and stronger. If I ran a stop light, some cop would roar up and apologize for that light's being red. If I stepped into a bar to order a drink, the bartender would beat his forehead in anguish. "Freddy!" he'd scream. "You got to take better care of your stomach! Don't drink that slop I beg you!"

Even my pigs were affected by my new waveform. The time I flew back to Illinois to check on my farm, those pigs chased me clear out of the county. Nipped at my heels and bayed like beagles, those pigs did.

I wasn't too upset about it. I planned on selling the farm anyway. Now that I'm in the diplomatic service, I won't have much time for pig farming. Being the ambassador to Russia is a big job, and I'm worried about it. I don't know whether I'll like having all those Cossacks call me Uncle Freddy. I don't know what I'll do with the Kremlin when they give it to me.